


Strings Attached

by manic_intent



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Christmas prompts, M/M, That Blackwatch era story where Gabriel really hates flying commercial, and Jesse just hasn't done it before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 13:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8892442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: Decades hadn’t really changed commercial travel all that much when it came to air travel. A few years back, before the Crisis, most modern airports had been at or close to full automation. Fear always took people more steps backwards than they had to go though—which was why Gabriel was now stuck in a winding check-in queue in Heathrow, feeling mildly traumatised. Further, far too much further down the line, check-in counter staff flashed forced smiles at the human herd, manually processing passports and luggage. It was like being kicked back to life half a century ago. 
“This place is a bomb disaster waiting to happen.” 
Gabriel closed his eyes and counted to five for patience. “Fuck’s sake, kid. Do you even process that shit before it comes out of your mouth?”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nikorys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikorys/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [【OW/守望先锋】【麦R】Strings Attached 附加条件 By manic_intent 粮食甜饼一发完](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14175369) by [batcat229](https://archiveofourown.org/users/batcat229/pseuds/batcat229)



> Happy holidays! Like most end of year periods, I open briefly for prompts on tumblr, taking 5 prompts on a first come first serve basis. Thanks everyone who sent in prompts!
> 
> Here’s the first :3   
> **Prompt 1/5** : for nikorys: McReyes, travelling together

One benefit of signing up with Uncle Sam decades back meant never having to fly commercial again. Or so he’d thought. Gabriel Reyes had worked every last drop of wanderlust out of himself in his day job putting out fires around the world, and spent downtime firmly in the US of A, using the Hyperloop if he really had to get somewhere. As to having downtime after the Omnic Crisis rolled into full swing? _Forget it_. 

Decades hadn’t really changed commercial travel all that much when it came to air travel. A few years back, before the Crisis, most modern airports had been at or close to full automation. Fear always took people more steps backwards than they had to go though—which was why Gabriel was now stuck in a winding check-in queue in Heathrow, feeling mildly traumatised. Further, far too much further down the line, check-in counter staff flashed forced smiles at the human herd, manually processing passports and luggage. It was like being kicked back to life half a century ago. 

“This place is a bomb disaster waiting to happen.” 

Gabriel closed his eyes and counted to five for patience. “Fuck’s sake, kid. Do you even process that shit before it comes out of your mouth?” 

Jesse McCree grinned, a crooked coyote smirk that bared his teeth. He was a gangly kid, still well into his growth spurt, with scruffy brown hair that weren’t strictly regulation-length and a downy beard that he was failing to cultivate. For this mission he’d been weaned off his ridiculous love of cowboy hats and into a black tee and jeans. Blackwatch’s youngest agent was technically still on probation, but barring some sort of supremely impressive fuck-up, he was probably going to be given full operative status soon. Annoying as the little shit could be, there was no faking his combat scores, and Jesse knew it. 

“Aww, c’mon, bossman. I ain’t ever been on a plane before like this.” 

“Firstly,” Gabriel bit out, low enough that only Jesse would hear him, “stop calling me that. We’re undercover. If you don’t understand what that means, check a fucking dictionary. Secondly. You _have_ been on a plane…” He trailed off, frowning. “Ah. You mean. Flying commercial.” 

They shuffled forward in the queue even as Jesse ducked his head. The human herd, made incurious by the slow wastage of their lives, ignored them en masse, some of them pointedly. Being dark-skinned, tall, and built like a quarterback still tended to have an effect on certain people, no matter how much the UN countries liked to tout their ‘progress’. “Yeah,” Jesse said finally. “Ain’t ever had the pleasure before.” He paused as a little goblin somewhere to their left shrieked as though it had just been stabbed in the gut. “‘Pleasure’,” Jesse repeated, though he grinned. “God damn. Sure are a lot of people in here.”

“Don’t start.” 

“I like kids, I really do.”

“Yeah?” Gabriel sniffed. “Most people like to say that. But when you ask them whether they’d rather mind a room full of hyperactive kids, or a room full of hyperactive puppies, you’d see what they truly think. Most of us just like to _say_ that we like kids. Makes us more normal.” 

“Not you though. You don’t give a damn.” 

Gabriel lifted a shoulder into a slight shrug. “War has a tendency to bleed away the number of fucks you’re willing to give.” 

“Why’re we _here_ , though?” Jesse nodded at the crowds. “Planes have got air marshalls on them, yeah? I don’t think they had’ta check in.” 

“If you’d listened to the briefing,” Gabriel said flatly, “you’d have known that the intel indicated that the possible omnic hijacking was going to take place mid-flight, and that the algorithm they were using was only going to target planes with no apparent onboard security.” 

“I heard all that. I meant. Shit. Ain’t like you don’t have one of the most recognisable faces around.” 

Gabriel looked pointedly at the crowd around them. “You see anyone picking that up?” An old gray shirt, jeans and a cap had taken care of Commander Reyes. According to Gabriel’s new cover, he was Gabriel Santos, a car salesman living in West Virginia. Someone in the tech div had a fucking awful sense of humour.

Jesse went through the soul-destroying delays of check-in and customs processing with far too much glee for a black ops agent. How old was the kid again? Gabriel vaguely remembered him being old enough to be a soldier, but not much more than that. At least the few other Blackwatch agents he could pick out here and there in the crowd seemed to be doing fine. Nobody made eye contact. Leena was browsing perfumes in the duty free. Antias was in the queue at the McDonalds— 

“Why are there shops inside?” Jesse asked, looking around with wide eyes at the sprawling retail floor, busy fleecing the human herd. 

“Why not? Everyone’s stuck here for at least an hour before their flight. Stop gawking. You’re pulling attention.” 

“I can’t help it. I ain’t ever been in a place like this,” Jesse said, though he made a visible effort to look serious, an attempt that made him look vaguely constipated. 

Gabriel sighed. “Nevermind. You wanna walk around? Meet me back in that cafe in half an hour.” 

Starbucks had been pushing what Gabriel liked to think of as alt-coffee on unsuspecting consumers for well over half a century, and it hadn’t improved since the last time he’d happened to be this desperate for caffeine in its vicinity. He staked out an empty table, tried to lower his standards, and drank, checking his messages on his wrist-comm. Half were from Torbjörn, who’d clearly had some sort of magic-mushroom-fuelled all-nighter. A napalm turret? The fuck for? Busy composing a suitably acerbic response, Gabriel’s hand flinched instinctively to his hip when Jesse sat noisily opposite him. 

Jesse raised his eyebrows even as Gabriel awkwardly tried to cover the slip with a sip of the godawful cat piss masquerading as caffeine. “That was quick.” Gabriel said. 

“It’s been half an hour.” 

“Buy anything?” Gabriel asked absently, still drafting his response. 

“You mean I could?” 

Gabriel glanced up, puzzled. “What d’you mean? ‘Course you could.”

Jesse’s eyes were round. “I have _money_?”

“Yes?” Gabriel frowned at him. “I sign off on employee pay, and your name’s on the fucking list the last I checked. Didn’t you get the paperwork?” 

“I signed a whole bunch of paper when I joined, I didn’t read it,” Jesse said, blinking owlishly. “But I didn’t… hell, I’m here ‘cos it was this or jail, yeah? I didn’t think it was really… I mean, in Deadlock I never had my own money.”

Gabriel didn’t have enough good caffeine to deal with this. He stared at Jesse for a long moment, then he exhaled loudly and dug in his pockets. Currency might be increasingly digital now, but no black ops agent worth their salt went anywhere without some area-appropriate hard cash. He found a few tattered pound notes and handed them over, then went back to reading his messages.

After a few minutes, Gabriel realized belatedly that the kid was still there. “What? Need more?”

“No, I… no.” Jesse was staring at him strangely. “Thanks. I owe you?”

“Don’t worry about it, kid.” 

“This isn’t about… last week, is it?” 

Last week? Gabriel frowned at Jesse for a long moment, then he remembered. The Algerian mission, the communal showers, still riding high on adrenaline. Fraternisation wasn’t illegal in Blackwatch—everyone was too highly strung as it is: in Gabriel’s opinion, any outlet that didn’t end up with his agents dead was a good one. 

“Told you there ain’t any strings attached.” Gabriel said slowly. “Don’t think so hard. You’d hurt yourself. Go buy biscuits or shitty souvenirs or whatever. Knock yourself out.” 

Jesse smiled slowly, a tentative curl, as though afraid that the reason for smiling was about to be confiscated at any moment. “Thanks.” He got to his feet, circled around, and before Gabriel could react, leaned in quick for a quick peck on the mouth. Then he retreated, scuttling off, while Gabriel stared after him, bemused.

Huh. Brats.

#

Omnics attacking the plane midair had actually been a relief. Trapped in coach and surrounded by squalling goblins, Gabriel had been near ready to sabotage the plane himself. Time might have made commercial planes faster, but it hadn’t quite solved the nightmare of how sardine-packed affordable travel was. It hadn’t been much of a fight, sadly, hobbled as Reyes was without his shotguns. By the time they’d gotten rid of the hijackers, landed the plane safely, and gotten whisked off back to Gibraltar, Gabriel was 110% ready to pass out, maybe with a healthy dose of Dr Whisky.

To his annoyance, he was hauled into a long debrief with Jack and the UN Secretary. He survived it on auto, staying awake by concentrating on holding down his impulse to punch Jack in his righteously too-perfect mouth, and slunk off to his room the moment he could come up with a valid excuse. Where, of all people, he found Jesse, lurking outside. 

Life with the Deadlock gang had given Jesse good instincts. “I’ll, uh, come back later. Sir.” 

“How long have you been waiting here?”

“Not long?” Jesse hazarded. 

“You’ve got to fix that,” Gabriel growled, glancing into the retinal scan. “When you’re lying, your eyes dart down to your boots. Someday, it’s gonna get you killed. Well? Come in, then.” 

Jesse sidled quickly in through the door, as though afraid that the invitation was going to get rescinded. Then he looked around, openly curious. Gabriel knew what the room was like. Stark, empty, no family pictures. _You live in a hotel room, Gabe,_ Jack had once told him playfully. Should’ve punched that smug bastard then. While Gabriel had still been the leader of Overwatch. 

“Every time I think I’ve got you figured out,” Jesse said ruefully. 

“Yeah?” Gabriel leaned a hip against his desk, folding his arms. 

“You’re throwing my asshole radar out of whack,” Jesse complained, though he grinned as he said it. Stayed out of range though. Instincts again. 

“Nobody’s that easy to pigeonhole. Making hard assumptions about people’s a bad habit. Will probably also get you killed, in our line of work.” 

“You’re a real ray of sunshine, boss.” Jesse took a few steps closer, as though testing the waters, then sauntered over the rest of the way when Gabriel only raised an eyebrow. When he was close enough, Gabriel relented, pulling Jesse over, easy and slow. Kid smelled of soap and hot water, and he let out a nice, wounded little sound when Gabriel nipped at his neck. 

“This better not be about the pocket change I gave you in Heathrow,” Gabriel murmured, though he let hands sneak up over his shoulders. 

“I didn’t really need it, y’know. Could’ve stolen a wallet if I’d really wanted to buy somethin’.”

“If you’d pickpocketed someone on a mission for a stupid reason like that, you’d have pissed me off.” 

“I know,” Jesse said, wonderingly. “That’s why I didn’t do it. S’new for me,” he admitted, more softly. “Bein’ scared of disappointin’ someone.” 

Gabriel leaned back sharply, narrow-eyed, but Jesse stared back at him, tense and thin-lipped but unblinking. A better man might’ve let up, sat Jesse down and had a long talk about the way Jesse’s fucked up childhood had made him both eminently and disastrously suited for an op like Blackwatch. Gabriel, however, knew exactly the kind of person that he was, and pretending otherwise had never suited him. He kissed Jesse instead, an ugly kiss, more bite and possessiveness than the kindness Jesse seemed to be begging for. The kid leaned into it anyway, pressing closer, an eager sound folded between them. No. If there was one thing Gabriel had learned about Jesse in Heathrow, it was that Jesse didn’t recognise kindness anyway. 

“Get used to it,” Gabriel murmured, in the space that he broke between them, and Jesse grinned, that feral, crooked coyote grin, and started to get down on his knees.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent


End file.
